How many practices of intergenerational care and education are there in the world?
In Japan there was only one intergenerational (integrated early childhood and senior) center (called “Koutouen”) in the 1970s. But since the 1990s, more and more such centers have been made every year.
There are three types of centers; visiting type, event type and natural type. It is expected that the natural type of center will be increasing.
In this paper, we will;
1. Introduce intergenerational care and education in Japan to exchange such practices in other OMEP countries.
2. Discuss theoretical ideas that cause reciprocal effects in developing children, elderly people and other generations in intergenerational care and education.
I have established my own Developmental Hypothesis of Life–Long Development according to the activities below.
I would like to explain the causes of reciprocal effects in my Hypothesis.
Each generation has a different prime activity. In intergenerational care and education,
each generation joins the same action while engaged in their own prime activity.
For example, the prime activity for a preschool child is “Play”, for elderly people it is “Reflective Labor” and for the middle generation it is as a coordinator or a teacher and is called “Creative Productive Labor”.
If children play traditional games learned from the elderly generation, while being helped by coordinators, the Prime activities of all three generations can be satisfied with intergenerational “Play”. Children can play to learn a new way, elderly people can use the wisdom that they gained in their younger years, and middle aged people can capitalize on their abilities. As each generation is helping to develop each other, this becomes a reciprocal benefit.
